'Bully in het Oerwoud'.
Berend Dam was a Dutch illustrator, painter and comic artist from Arnhem, signing his work with either "B. Dam" or "Bedam". His comics output was made exclusively for the publishing house Mulder & Zoon, for whom he produced the series 'Bully Dog' (1956, 1958) and drew the final episodes of J.H. Koeleman jr.'s 'De Avonturen van Pinkie Pienter' (1958-1959).
Life
Not much is known about Berend Dam's life and career, except that he worked as an advertising illustrator and comic artist in the city of Arnhem in the province of Gelderland. Previous research implied that he was born in 1927 and that he died in 1999, but this seems to be wrong information. In a portrait of the artist in the local newspaper Arnhemse Courant on 24 May 1960, it was mentioned that Berend Dam was 51 years old at the time, making his birth year either 1908 or 1909. According to MyHeritage.com, an artist called Berend Dam was born in Amsterdam on 12 February 1909, and died in Arnehm on 9 June 2002. He was married to Wendelina Vermeer in 1941, with whom he had four children.
Berend Dam portrayed in the local newspaper Arnhemse Courant on 24 May 1960. Curiously enough, the paper introduces him as working fulltime on his upcoming 'Bully Dog' books, even highlighing the very first episode, although the series had appeared four years earlier!
Bully Dog
Around 1950, Dam tried his hand at creating comics when he attempted to sell a strip to a newspaper. This project fell through, but his luck changed when he began his association with the publishing house Mulder & Zoon in Amsterdam. In 1956, he created his signature comic series for them, 'Bully Dog'. The original series consisted of eight hardcover albums, and featured the adventures of an anthropomorphic bulldog. Like most traditional comic heroes of the time, Dam's dog adventurer visited all parts of the world. He hunted for treasures, visited ghost castles, controlled jungle animals by feeding them magical pills, served as sheriff in the Wild West and experienced adventures in Turkey and India. By 1958, Mulder & Zoon released all eight adventures again, but this time chopped up in smaller comic books, resulting in a series of sixteen volumes. At the same time, Mulder also released the series in the French language ('Bull Dog').
Note that 1956 and 1958 were estimated publication years for the two ‘Bully Dog’ series from the Hans Matla comics catalogue. In the 1960 article on Berend Dam in the Arnhemse Courant, the comic was presented as a new and upcoming series. If 1960 was the actual publication date of the first series, the ‘Bully Dog’ comic can be seen as a successor to ‘Pinkie Pienter’ in the Mulder catalog, since the latter had been canceled by necessity a couple of years earlier.
'Bully Dog'.
Pinkie Pienter
In 1958, Dam was commissioned by Mulder to work on the children's comic 'De Avonturen van Pinkie Pienter', originally created by J.H. Koeleman. In the 1950s, 'Pinkie Pienter' was a best-seller, with translations in English and French, despite Koeleman's lack of experience in drawing comics. In 1958, however, Koeleman had a dispute with Mulder & Zoon, who wanted to boost up sales by re-releasing older 'Pinkie Pienter' stories with only 16 pages per booklet. The publisher shortened the stories randomly, or just ended them halfway a scene. The publisher even went so far to give new titles to the older stories, so they would appear new. It was an obvious marketing scam that Koeleman refused to participate in. To keep the successful series going, Mulder first hired Lex Overeijnder to whip out new 'Pinkie Pinter' stories. However, Overeijnder took too much liberties by copying entire panels and plotlines from Hergé's 'Tintin'. By the time Berend Dam was assigned to the series, Mulder & Zoon already had two lawsuits on their neck: one by Koeleman and another by Hergé.
It's interesting to note that Dam's 'Bully Dog' stories were re-released in the same chopped-up manner as 'Pinkie Pienter', which might explain why he was picked by Mulder, or why he didn't seem to be bothered by the publisher's practices. However, Dam wrote and illustrated three 'Pinkie Pienter' stories, which nonetheless never even saw print in his home country: 'Le Vieux Taxi', 'Cirque Hakibro' and 'Un Vol Pour Rien' were printed solely in French in the issues #51 through #59 of 'Les Aventures de Martin le Malin'.
'Les Aventures de Martin le Malin' #52 - 'Le Rubis Géant'. A French-language 'Pinkie Pienter' story, never released in Dutch.
Dam started work on a fourth 'Pinkie Pienter' story, but by that point Mulder was legally forced to discontinue the series. While 'Pinkie Pienter' has remained a cult favorite for its charming naïvité and seemingly improvised storylines, this appeal mostly stems from Koeleman's original stories. Both Overeijnder and Dam apparently had to work under such strict deadlines, that their output became very sloppy.
Postcards by Berend Dam.
Greeting cards
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Berend Dam drew many series of postcards, mostly depicting cute little children and military humor. Many cards were self-published under the imprint "Berend Dam, Arnhem". Through the publishing house Gebr. Spanjersberg B.V. in Rotterdam, he also released several cards with his comic character 'Bully Dog'. The folded cards had a color drawing on the front, and a short comic strip inside with text in rhyme.
Comic strip from one of the 'Bully Dog' postcards.